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Thanks to a free update to PS4’s WipEout Omega Collection (2017), you can finally get the authentic anti-grav racing experience on PSVR. The game’s VR update is a smart and skillful adaptation, offering players a chance to “play the full game in virtual reality from start to finish.” Just be sure to get familiar with the game’s various comfort options to find what works for you before you push it to the limit.

The franchise that seemed destined for VR from the beginning is finally here. Wipeout Omega Collection launched back in 2017, and brings remastered versions of WipEout HD (2008), WipEout HD Fury (2009), and WipEout 2048 (2012) together on PS4. And now, thanks to a free update released this week, you can play it all on PlayStation VR.

Of course, the legendary franchise is known for its high speeds and sharp cornering, which, on paper, seems like a recipe for nausea in VR. Thankfully, the developers have taken their time and offered a number of smart adjustments to keep players comfortable even while racing at breakneck speeds, taking jumps, and doing barrel rolls.

One of the core comfort innovations is a ship design which puts the player in a cockpit that rotates independently from the rest of the ship. Not only does this look really cool, it greatly cushions the rotations otherwise caused by twists and turns, without sacrificing the feeling of speed and cornering, thanks to the rest of the ship separately around your cockpit. You can also race from a third-person view, but I found I enjoyed the immersion of the first person view the most when playing on PSVR. The detailed interior is sharp and futuristic looking, and damn if it isn’t cool to see your air brakes pop up during tight cornering from the interior view, not to mention the thrill of trying to line up a perfect salvo from your machine gun. Check out a full race in VR:

There’s other comfort options too. If you aren’t prone to motion sickness, you can try dialing back the peripheral canopy in the game’s settings, which pulls back the enclosure around your head, opening up more of your view at any one time to the game world. This effectively increases your field of view, but you might find that makes your more susceptible to nausea. Instead of the independently rotating cockpit, you can also lock the camera’s rotation to your craft’s full rotation, or to the track itself (with each step increasing the motion of the experience).

Each time you dial back the comfort options, you open yourself up to the possibility of nausea. In a game like Wipeout Omega Collection, it can build slowly over time until you suddenly realize you’re dizzy and need to take off the headset (which is never fun). But if you pace yourself—experiment with the comfort options, find what works—you can have a ton of fun with Wipeout on PSVR.

Image courtesy Sony Studio Liverpool

If you take your time and find your personal sweet spot among the comfort options, you’re in for a treat. Wipeout on PSVR delivers a responsive and well produced game that looks and sounds as great as it plays. The game has seen a full 3D audio pass, highlighting its strong sound design—it’s quite immersive to hear the pulsing engines of enemies zoom past you, or incoming machine gun fire. And who could forget the great soundtrack which heightens the action every step of the way?

This looks sooo sick. I really hope it somehow comes to the likes of Rift and Vive too. So long as it’s not being developed and/or funded by an internal Sony first party team then a truly smart company would put it on them imo–because more exposure and acclaim and sales and satisfied VR customers is only really a good thing.

You uh…you do realize Sony owns the WipEout series? Developed by Sony Liverpool Studio (which they shut down). Kinda been that way for like 20 years. You might as well have asked when Zelda is gonna come out on the Xbox.

Before you respond with “I didn’t know that”, maybe think about how you didn’t even do even the slightest amount of research before saying something that makes you look incompetent.

KLEEBAN KLIBAN

Your response is unnecessarily harsh. He was completely positive and said nothing to antagonize anyone.

You uh… you do realize incompetence is the inability to do something as opposed to the absence of something being done? Been that way for a lot longer than 20 years. Nothing he said suggested he couldn’t Google the publisher. Not caring enough to investigate is apathy and not knowing any single thing there is to know is mere ignorance, which everyone is guilty of an infinite number of times over.

Before you respond with “I didn’t know what incompetence meant before I used the word to insult someone for no reason”, maybe think about how you didn’t even do the slightest amount of research before saying something that makes you look hypocritical.

J.C.

Yeah, I was in a rotten mood when I typed that up. I totally earned this sort of response.

KLEEBAN KLIBAN

Wow! Mad respect! Seriously!

JJ

I still agree with you though in saying that people should do more research before making such firm statements. And if you do make statements and are wrong people have every right to call you out.

Richard Norriss

In fact the Saturn and N64 got versions of Wipeout but back then the games were developed and published by Pysgnosis and independant of Sony, where as now they are published by Sony.

Alexisms

It won’t come to any other headsets HOWEVER with the recent reduction in the PSVR price one of those plus a second hand PS4 is less than you’d pay for a Vive or Rift :-)

James

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Kenji Fujimori

Looks good, but a little slow? should be very fast, loose the annoying British accents also.

J.C.

It’s likely a beginner-level race. As the article says, you should ease into the game to see where your limits are.

Alexisms

Oh dear Kenji. Remember always to THINK before you type. Presumably you mean LOSE not LOOSE? And why anyway? Wipeout was created in England.

Kenji Fujimori

Sorry cherry boy, you must be a virgin for your age

Kenji Fujimori

You are racist to a Japanese I take it, LOSER

Kenji Fujimori

Why are you being racist to Japanese?

Kenji Fujimori

It was a typo you dipshit

Martin Brentnall

The field of view when playing on TV is unnaturally wide to create the illusion of moving much faster than you really are.

In VR, the field of view needs to match that of the headset, which results in a much slower looking game when watching VR footage on a TV.

The actual speed is exactly the same whether you’re playing on TV or in VR.